RESUMO
Tuberculosis [TB] remains a major global health problem. More effective biomarkers for use in TB diagnosis, prevention, and treatment, are urgently needed. We aimed to detect expression of microRNA [miR]-29a and miR-361-5p in sera of patients with active pulmonary TB, attempting to evaluate their role as potential biomarkers for the early diagnosis of pulmonary TB infection. using real-time PCR [RT-PCR], relative expression levels of miR-29a and 361-5p were analyzed in serum samples from patients with active pulmonary TB [n=20], patients with pulmonary infection caused by bacteria other than M .tuberculosis [n=15], and healthy subjects [n=15].The receiver operating characteristic [ROC] curve was used to evaluate the diagnostic effect of each miRNA. We found the expression of serum miR-29a was significantly elevated in TB infected patients compared to other bacterial infection group and healthy subjects [P<0.01].On the other hand, there was no significant difference of miR-361-5p expression [P=0.05].MiR-29a exhibited a good distinguishing efficiency in discriminating the TB infected group from the control groups, but miR-361-5p exhibited a poor distinguishing efficiency. The present study demonstrated that the expression of miR-29a in serum was highly significantly elevated in TB infected patients. The diagnostic performance of miR-29ais better than miR-361-5p for pulmonary TB. We recommend large scale studies to investigate the molecular role of both miRNAs in TB infection. Also, further studies are needed to assess the diagnostic efficiency of miR-29a as a biomarker for different situations including protection by vaccination, discrimination of latent and active disease, assessment of treatment outcome, and relapse risk